


in balance

by WattStalf



Series: Commissions [42]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Slow Burn, Sort Of, as slow as you can get in two chapters but like it's a lot of offscreen slow burn so like, commission, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21523120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WattStalf/pseuds/WattStalf
Summary: Colleagues begin to develop feelings for one another, resisting it at first and accepting it as time goes by.Told in two parts, pre-movie and post-movie
Relationships: Spencer Hale/John Schuyler
Series: Commissions [42]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1325462
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> this is one of the only pokemon movies I've actually seen all the way through but boy howdy has it been several years

Molly doesn’t like him. That much is pretty obvious to John whenever he sees her, and it’s not hard to imagine why. She wants to see her father more, who works too much for her liking, and why wouldn’t she hate the man who works by his side? If John calls him with some break through in the research, Spencer will come running even if John tells him it isn’t urgent, and Molly, who knows nothing about the other side of the conversation, only knows that calls from John usually mean her father is about to leave again.

John takes on as much work as he can to make sure Spencer is able to spend more time with his daughter, but this doesn’t always work. The other man works himself too hard, and there’s only so much he can do about that. Still, whether Molly knows it or not, he’s trying his best.

She hates him, for reasons he can understand, but he does wish she would warm up to him a little more, perhaps for entirely selfish reasons. Well, maybe not  _ entirely _ ; he likes her quite a bit and wouldn’t mind being closer to his colleague’s daughter, but a lot of that stems from his desire to be closer to his colleague.

Ever since his wife’s disappearance, Spencer hasn’t been looking for a new relationship, which is again, something that is perfectly understandable. John doesn’t mean to take an interest in him, but after too many late nights together, it’s hard to ignore the feelings as they begin to develop, and as time moves forward, things become so comfortable between the two of them that he wonders, at times, if his feelings might not be completely one-sided.

Still, nothing is said about it, and John knows better than to be the first one to bring it up. He can’t expect Spencer to move on just like that because of him, and even if he is starting to accept the possibility of having another relationship, there are still more important matters to worry about. There’s their research, for one thing, and there’s Molly, waiting for her father at home, and John encourages him to spend every free moment at home, rather than suggesting that they take any time to get to know each other outside of work.

Of course, through all of this, Molly continues to despise him, but there’s not much that can be done about that.

~X~

Some nights, it’s impossible to convince Spencer to head home, no matter how exhausted he may be, no matter how late it may be. Even if John insists that he can wrap things up on his own, Spencer will reply that he’s not ready to wrap things up yet, and that he still has things he needs to get done, but John is more than welcome to get some rest, if he needs to. Naturally, John always refuses that offer, and stays with the professor until the end.

That’s where they are the night that things first start to shift. It should be nothing, but it isn’t, and it’s enough confirmation, at least, that there really is more to their closeness than meets the eye. Spencer is sitting at a table, looking over some of his notes, reading and rereading as he tries to make sense of it in his exhausted state. John has suggested time and again that they call it a night, only to be rebuffed or otherwise ignored, so now, he’s simply taken to watching over Spencer while he works himself into exhaustion yet again.

Spencer’s head starts to tip forward, his eyes drifting closed, before he jerks awake again and tries to get back to it. This process continues to repeat itself over the next several minutes until he isn’t able to snap back to attention, his head hanging as he falls asleep at the table, and John shakes his head. He’d warned him about this, but Spencer hadn’t listened, and now, he wonders if he should wake him up and send him home, or try and make it more comfortable for him so that he can just spend the night here.

Picking up a spare coat, he walks over to Spencer so that he can drape it over his shoulders, leaning down a bit too much when he does so. That is when Spencer jerks awake and John jumps back, guilty and sure that he’s been caught. Judging by the look Spencer gives him as his bleariness starts to fade, he definitely has.

“Sorry, I must have been out for a little bit there,” he says. “But you don’t have to worry about me, I’m awake now.”

“If you’re not going to get a nap in, you should probably head home and get to bed,” John replies, holding the coat in his hands awkwardly, the remaining evidence of how close their faces were just moments before.

“Maybe I should. I can’t exactly sleep here, but I was hoping to…”

“There’s always tomorrow.”

There’s a pause of neither of them quite knowing what to say, before Spencer says, “I appreciate you trying to help me, but you really don’t need to worry about me so much.”

John knows the meaning behind his words; it’s a rejection without a real rejection. He doesn’t have to say what he knows is really going on, and so he doesn’t have to actually tell John that it isn’t going to happen, but that’s what it means. Spencer doesn’t understand the point in letting things progress, most likely.

Most likely, he’s probably decided that he’s moved past all of that, regardless of what he might actually want. Because, despite his rejection without a rejection, there is flash of something almost like longing in his eyes, and John knows that it’s there, that it might be possible to bring out, even, if only he were to try to convince him.

But his uncertainty stops him in the end, and the only thing he convinces Spencer to do is head home and get some sleep. Their relationship, if they even have one, comes to a standstill, if it were ever moving to begin with.


	2. Chapter 2

Everything changes after he disappears and somehow returns. They’ve drifted away from their shared research, and Spencer spends his time at home, where he probably should have been all along. There are still things to look into, though, and that is what John dedicates his time to, and always finds the time to pay Spencer a visit so that he can update him on his findings.

And for the most part, John has done what he can to put his feelings behind him. The last thing he wants to do is potentially push a good friend and colleague away, and he can allow himself to be happy with whatever relationship they have. Just being able to get caught up with him is enough, and being able to spend time together without all the pressure of their work.

Except…

Except putting his feelings behind him doesn’t really stop things from progressing between the two of them. If anything, when he doesn’t think about what could have been, it feels like they’re even closer than they were before, or perhaps that’s because they no longer have their work between them, and are simply seeing each other because they want to. Even Molly has warmed up to him more in the time since the incident, though she’s grown up quite a bit in such a short amount of time.

Already, she’s got her first companion Pokemon, and seems pretty dead set on becoming a trainer as soon as she is able to. She’s out trying to catch Pokemon any time she can get her hands on a ball, and soon, she’ll want to leave home on her journey. More than once, Spencer will admit that he’s taking a little harder than he expected to.

“Hypocritical of me, right?” he asks with a bitter laugh. “I wasted so much time I could have spent with her, and now she’s ready to grow up and I’m worried about not getting to see her as much.”

“I don’t think Molly would see it that way. I think she would understand you were just concerned about her,” he replies. “But, even so, you’re not going to be able to stop her when the time comes. She can be a stubborn girl, so…”

“Oh, you don’t have to tell me that, I’ve had to see that enough firsthand,” Spencer says, shaking his head, his laugh sounding a bit more genuine now. “I want her to be able to be a trainer, if that’s what she really wants, and I’ll be rooting for her all the while. I’m just starting to realize that she’s growing up and I’m not getting any younger myself. Sometimes it feels like life has just passed me by.”

“Now, now, you’re not  _ that _ old yet. And if you keep talking like that, you’re going to start making  _ me _ feel old, and I can’t have that,” he argues. “You’ve still got plenty of time left.”

“Maybe so, but it all feels like it’s going too fast, or maybe I’ve always been moving too slow. Either way…I don’t want to keep wasting time on things. If I’m going to move forward, best to start now.”

John’s breath hitches in his throat at the sudden direction this conversation is taking. He remembers that night more than a year ago, when he felt like it was the final rejection, and he remembers every other night before that, when he wondered where, if anywhere, all of this was going. He’s done his best to forget about it and just let things progress as they will, but this is wandering into awfully specific territory, and if Spencer isn’t careful, he might just misinterpret.

“It’s hard having a family and a career,” Spencer continues. “Especially when you’re doing it by yourself. Perhaps when she goes on her journey, that won’t be as much of a worry, but I want her to always have someone to come home to. If I get back to my research, I worry that I might not be enough. I don’t want to stretch myself too thin again.”

“You’ll always have me there to help with research,” John replies, though that isn’t what he wants to suggest. “If you actually listen to me telling you to take breaks and let me handle more, that is.”

“I know, I know. You always were right about that, and I should have listened to you more, you can rub it in if you want to. But that’s all in the past now, and while I would let you take on extra work for my sake, that wouldn’t be fair,” he says.

“If it were for you and Molly, it would be no trouble.”

“Yes, but what about when you need a break?” he asks, before pausing for a moment, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Molly has grown a lot fonder of you lately. As she grows, I think she understands things better, and probably considers you like a part of the family at this point.”

“I...don’t know about that,” he says, because it’s all he can think to say.

“As long as she had at least one of us to come home to, then it wouldn’t matter which one of us was taking a break,” Spencer says finally, and it isn’t much, but it says all that John needs to hear, and he understands.

“If that’s the case, then maybe we should team back up,” John replies, also not saying much, but giving Spencer his answer all the same. After all this time, it feels so natural to just let it happen, despite the past hurdles and roadblocks that prevented them from getting this far. So much has changed over the past year to get them to this point.

“We’ve figured out quite a bit together,” Spencer continues. “If we really put our all into it, I do think we could figure out how to balance our research and our family.”

_ Our _ family, he says.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested in my writing updates, please follow my fanfiction twitter @WattStalf  
> 


End file.
